The free encyclopedia for 8-13 years old that everybody can make better

Project descriptionWhat is the project purpose? What will be its scope? How would it benefit to be part of Wikimedia?

Wikikids is intended to be a wiki encyclopedia designed for children aged 8 to 13, open to contributors of any age.

How many wikis?Will there be many language versions or just on one multilingual wiki?

One wiki per language

How many languages?Is the project going to be in one language or in many?

There will be several language versions

Technical requirementsIf the project requires any new features that the MediaWiki software currently doesn't have, please describe in detail. Are additional MediaWiki extensions needed for the project?

The Wikikids proposal is intended to be a wiki encyclopedia designed for children aged 8 to 13, open to contributors of any age. It aims both to offer a suitable corpus of knowledge for children and to let some of them, as well as teenagers them be involved in building it. It is very close to Wikipedia in its aim and functioning, except the age range.

Wikikids is a working title for it, or the New or WMF Wikikids, to avoid confusion with the already existing Wikikids.nl. The proposal was first set up in 2005 and discussed even earlier (2003). It was renewed by different users.

Many children already use Wikipedia daily, for the substantial content and the well known convenient way it is to find material on any subject. However, it is often said that Wikipedia article are too long and difficult for them. Many children really need and appreciate when it does exist to have a more readable content for them.

Wikimedia Foundation's vision, mission and values

Rationales or grounds for this project share most of those of Wikipedia and other sister project. Wikikids can response to:

"The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."(...)

The level of Wikipedia articles makes them hardly accessible for children or even other people on some subjects. While they may read it for lack of a better resource, the fulfilment of these vision and mission certainly justify another encyclopedic rendering on each subject, in another wiki. Moreover, children and teenagers can be active in the building process and gets to feel both empowerment and motivation for the content as a reader.

Education

Young people can be involved in the process, alone or within educational activities organised by schools. They may also gain some digital/media literacy by learning about the functioning of a resource they will use extensively few years later: Wikipedia, although the goal is still to create content an the "knowledge resource" benefit of such a project.

(...)It is recommended: (...)3. That, however, the Foundation investigate the creation of a “WikiJunior” version of the Wikipedias, aimed at children under the age of 12, either as a stand-alone project or in partnership with existing and appropriate educational institutions.

"Article 13 - 1. The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice."

Wikipedia articles may often be too difficult for teenagers as for younger children. Though, to be really different from Wikipedia, Wikikids concentrates on younger children: old enough to read and to have access to internet content, too young for Wikipedia. Eight-year-olds have usually reach a pretty good reading level, whereas teenagers have other needs and opportunities. The 8 to 13 age range is just indicative; also, not every article can be exactly on the same level. Older people could find useful information on it and less than 8 year old children could be curious enough to have a look, too.

Everybody is invited to edit Wikikids, without age restrictions. There are no mandatory or forbidden roles or status related to the users real ages. Wikikids needs grown-up contributions and enable children and teenagers to write and to be involved in building the encyclopedia.

Adults involvement is essential for building content that is of quality and significance, fostering basic maintenance: to watch and ensure a certain stability in the functioning of the wiki,

children's involvement, even when they don't produce very long articles, lets appear work on subjects that interest their peers, it responds to their aspirations and their desire to participate and they definitely can take their share in growing the content and in maintenance tasks,

older children, teenagers that don't (yet) edit Wikipedia can have the chance to do it here, and to make a good work, perhaps with Wikipedia articles as a guideline. The advantage is both the amount of work they can bring, and what this work can bring to them, like for the younger ones and like any Wikipedia editor,

school projects are welcomed provided they consider the wiki's rules and content objectives.

Should Wikikids as a WMF wiki come to existence, it could be open for already existing wikis to join. At the moment there are at least two wikis that are doing rather well measured by activity and audience.